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Backlog Refinement or Backlog Grooming

In order to get everybody on the team aligned, teams plan the work that should be done in the next sprint. The purpose of sprint planning is to agree on a goal for the next sprint and the set of backlog items to achieve it. Sprint planning is about prioritizing backlog items and agreeing on the number of backlog items in the sprint based on team capacity. Sprint planning kicks off every sprint. Scrum suggests investing two hours per sprint week in planning sessions. Experienced teams will be able to cut this down to an hour per week or less. Mostly because they are comfortable with less detail upfront and more uncertainty in their definition of ready. The meeting is attended by the entire team. Outside stakeholders are invited if they can provide additional expertise for specific backlog items. Today we will discuss a very important topic: backlog refinement vs backlog grooming.

Backlog Refinement or Backlog Grooming

Backlog refinement or backlog grooming stands for keeping the backlog up to date and getting backlog items ready for delivery. This involves rewriting backlog items to be more expressive, deleting obsolete ones, re-assessing the relative priority of stories, splitting big items into smaller ones, resorting them, and correcting estimates in light of newly discovered information. 

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How to Start With Evidence-Based Management?

From my experience and observations, my concern is weak understanding that the Evidence-Based Management (EBM) framework is empirical. It requires transparency, frequent inspection, and adaptation. Some organizations proceed with the initial evaluation and then drop the idea. Measuring once and making some decisions is not enough! No promises that this would work.

Measuring often, regularly, making decisions, adapting frequently towards a meaningful goal. This is the secret ingredient of the powerful framework. Like Scrum, EBM is simple to understand, difficult to master. Once you experience it, implement it in your organization, you should see significant results.

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What Should Be The Focus For The Product Owner?

The most straightforward answer would be – value, of course!

But How Do You Reach It?

Large numbers of Product Owners begin their work by creating requirements. In some situations, these scopes are dictated by others. Their work mainly consists of describing demands, thus apparently appearing as a scribe in their role.